


changeling

by Ias



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Dark, Dubiously Consensual Blow Jobs, Gaslighting, M/M, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, the fact that there's a pre-existing tag for that makes me feel less alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-12 01:03:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5648155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing about suffering is that after enough time, you learn to anticipate it. Maedhros is rescued, but he does not escape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	changeling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Piyo13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piyo13/gifts).



> Written for Iza as an incredibly belated Christmas present! I'm so lucky to be friends with such a talented and amazing person. I hope you enjoy!

The dreams are not sent to him every night, but that is a part of their design.

Maedhros dreams of the beating of wings. The sound and motion rises and then crashes over him like a wave. The pounding of surf. The smell of smoke. A familiar song and a familiar voice. It is not a happy dream, but that in itself is a comfort. The only pleasant dreams Maedhros has these days are those sent by Sauron himself. There is some strength to be found in knowing this pain is wholly his own.  

He dreams of his rescue, of the dull devouring agony that has come to define his life cut short with a series of short hacking blows. He observes the dream with interest, even as his body is lifted in Fingon’s arms and borne away on the backs of eagles. After being hung on the wall for so long, his chest has lost the ability to breathe or speak normally. Fingon mistakes his hacking, brutal laughter—rescued on the backs of eagles? Could anything be more preposterous?—for sobs of relief. Maedhros tries to correct him, to explain to the dream-figment that these delusions have long since lost the ability to torment him, but all that makes it past his lips are choked fragments. Fingon smooths his hair down and urges him not to speak. Maedhros lets his head loll to the side, ignoring the spike of pain that shoots through it, in order to watch the spires of Angband become miniature, and then become nothing. He imagines he can see his own body pinned to the highest cliff, clinging to it like a pale twisted root. He would wave goodbye to himself, but it seems this dream has lost him a hand.

The dream dissolves around him into the blank nothingness of true sleep. When he wakes, he will be on the wall. He was born there. He knows nothing else. He can never truly leave.

 

 

 

Maedhros wakes.

On instinct, he braces for the pain. It is always there, always waiting, circling his mind like the shadow of wolves around a campfire. Their teeth have moved from his hand to his arm to his shoulder, and then set to work tearing into his chest. They are ravenous. They never let him rest for long.

And yet—the pain is there, yes, but a weak and starving version of its former self. _Is this death?_ Maedhros wonders. If so, he welcomes it. He hopes the void that awaits him will be too far a distance for the agony to follow him.

“Maitimo?” The voice is familiar. Maedhros does not heed it. He sits propped up in bed, his eyes closed, conserving his strength. A hand reaches out to tentatively take his left. Yes, his left hand. That detail is important, if it is even real. He resists the urge to tear his hand away from that desperately tender grasp. He is on the wall. The absence of pain is disturbing, impossible to understand.

“It’s me, Maitimo,” the voice says, hesitant and still laden with that familiar eagerness. “Can you speak?”

Maedhros says nothing. He reaches deep into himself, calling up the fiery wind, the shackled hand, his own weight tearing his body apart. Like probing a finger into an open wound, he searches for what he knows must be there, beneath the illusion, beneath the dream, for it _must_ be—he knows nothing else—

Maedhros _wakes_ —

After a moment, the grip on his hand tightens in a way that is undoubtedly meant to be reassuring. “You’re safe now,” the voice whispers.

And it’s that, more than anything else, that makes Maedhros open his eyes. He turns his head and stares into Sauron’s face, with its familiar brown eyes and open, tentative smile. He has recreated Fingon’s features quite accurately. But in the end, Maedhros can tell the difference. He is beginning to see the shape of what is being done to him now, for this dream carries with it the familiar sweetness that traps him as an insect in honey. It is always Fingon who walks through these dreams, a marionette tugged by the strings in Sauron’s hand. Once, they were the worst dreams. Time and repetition has turned them tiresome.

He fixes Sauron with a look filled with all the weary dismissal he can muster. “If you only wish to spin me idle fancies, I suggest you put me back on the wall.”

Not-Fingon’s face flinches, a spasm of shock and horror. Maedhros turns away. In the end, he has learned two things: that Sauron is a convincing liar, and that he will never escape.

He closes his eyes. He knows how to endure.

 

 

It’s all taking place in his mind, of course. His body is still pinned to the wall, dangling like a carcass. He is not sure what the purpose of this illusion is, for he had thought that Sauron had tired of him long ago. Still, it’s a convincing replica—he has to breathe and drink and piss just like he would if he were alive. He can still feel pain, the persistent dull ache that gnaws at his hand and roves over his entire body. Perhaps this room is real, a careful reconstruction, with counterfeit sunlight and carefully rehearsed actors with long sleeves to hide the shackles of Angband. But that would mean he has been taken from the wall, and that cannot be.

The faces are as he remembers them—stolen them from his memories, of course—but the hall they keep him in is unfamiliar. That makes sense, for Sauron’s purposes. But the illusion falls apart under scrutiny. Everything is just slightly too bright, too soft. The only explanation is that it’s happening in his mind. A puppet show. Shadows on the wall. He’s on the wall, too. He chuckles at his own joke, starting the medic by his bedside into nearly dropping the tincture in her hands.

Fingon who is not-Fingon is the hardest to believe. Maedhros nearly laughs in his face as he sits by Maedhros’s bedside. He wonders if Sauron himself, tucked under a familiar smile, knows how ridiculous he looks feigning Fingon’s particular mannerisms. It had always been this way, as soon as Sauron saw his cousin as an opening to pry him apart Sauron knew well what dark thoughts lurked in the depths of Maedhros’s mind. He had long since delved into the darkest corners to find the knowledge Maedhros hid from even his own kin. Sauron knew that Maedhros had long looked on his cousin in longing. Every moment that Fingon had ever looked back was frozen as if in amber in Maedhros’s brain, free for Sauron to peruse at will. Nothing had come of it. Every time Maedhros would turn away, denied himself out of duty, out of respect, out of shame. Those words mean nothing to him now. He thinks if Fingon stood before him now in truth, he would devour every inch of him until there was no form or feeling left.

But this is not Fingon. Sauron has created a face more worn than Maedhros remembered, creased by cares. It showed a nice attention to detail, thinking to modify him that way. Maedhros makes it a point to compliment his craftsmanship often, though of course, Sauron must then pull Not-Fingon’s lips into a taut, unhappy line. Such is the nature of the play. Perhaps when it is both over they can compliment each other’s performances.

As to when it will be over, Maedhros cannot know. He has long since resigned himself to this. Still. At times, it is difficult, seeing the faces he knows and loves, faces that exist only in his mind now. He cannot allow himself to savor them, even in absentia. Pleasure is pain suspended here. No pun intended.

“Why now?” he asks Sauron on another one of his awkward visits. He wears his brother’s shape now, just as he wears the expression of wariness plastered over Maglor’s familiar face. “It has been long since you have thought to lower yourself to speak with me. Have your other thralls begun to bore you?” Maedhros demands. “Or perhaps you only feel nostalgic?”

Sauron stares at him through Maglor’s eyes. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

Maedhros makes a noise of disgust and turns away again. “Shall I play along, then?” he says. “Pretend that all of this is real, to please you?”

A brief, taut silence. “This _is_ real,” Sauron says slowly. “Findekáno rescued you, brother. You’re out of Angband. You’re safe.”

Maedhros sighs, sinking deeper into the pillows that aren’t really there. Safe. How many times must he endure that awful word? “Shall I leap for joy at that news?” he asks dryly, staring at Sauron with a small smile. “Perhaps you would like some tears? I must say, Gorathaur, if you wished for me to put on a show for you, you left me on the wall for too long.”

Sauron leaves after that, although of course he’s really here. He’s everywhere, for this is in Maedhros’s head and Sauron squats in its center like the spider in the middle of its web. Hungry. For what, Maedhros has yet to understand. He will, in time. That, too, is a certainty. 

Maedhros remembers all the other times, dreams and not-dreams both: early on in his imprisonment, when a thrall had released him from his cell and guided him to a tunnel she said would lead him out. When they had rounded the corner to find Sauron waiting for them and she bowed in deference before him, Maedhros learned his first lesson: he could trust no one, not even his own kind.

And then, there was the orc that leaned too close, allowing Maedhros to furtively slip the dagger from its belt and pick the lock of his shackles. He’d killed four of Sauron’s minions before they restrained him again. They’d made him bleed for it, but the pain had felt worth it—and then, when he remember the blood on his hands, the pain had been all the worse.

Then there’d been the loose drain in the corridor between his cell and the chamber where Sauron toyed with him. And then, the loose bar in his window he could use to bludgeon his guard. It wasn’t always like that, either—once Sauron had told him that his family had finally negotiated for his release, and had brought Maedhros (shaking in spite of himself) to the gates of Angband only to face an empty, desolate plain.

“Well!” Sauron had exclaimed. “It seems they’ve forgotten you after all, Maitimo.” And he’d laughed, and laughed.

Maedhros was not a fool. After a certain point, he had known that Sauron meant for him to find these little oversights, knowing that the hope of escape would lead only to deeper despair. He was right. For as much as Maedhros knew that every near-escape was choreographed, that never stopped him from wanting it so badly that the hope dug furrows up and down the inside of his skin. This false world dreamed for him now, populated by vague remembrances from Maedhros’s mind, is Sauron’s ultimate trick. But he has already showed his hand. Maedhros had long since decided that if escape was impossible, he would cease to want it any more. He has already hacked through the fibers holding him to his old life, as surely as a dagger through the withered flesh and bone trapped in an iron manacle. What lies behind has been cast aside. Ahead of him, only the wall.

 

 

“How can I convince you?” Sauron demands, pacing the floor in Fingon’s shape once more. He’s grown more agitated by the day, even as Maedhros feels himself grow stronger—his real body is wasting away, but in this world, his body is no longer dying.

Maedhros thinks about the question. “Give me your dagger,” he decides. “You know—the one you keep in your left boot, after your father yelled at you for twirling it around like that back in Tirion. I’d like to inspect how carefully you’ve crafted the illusion of the metalwork on the hilt.”

Sauron stares at him blankly. “There is no dagger. There never was.”

Maedhros laughs. “Very good!” he cries. “Your grip on my mind is strong indeed, Sauron. Is there anything you don’t know?” He leans forward, a laughing glint in his eyes. “Here’s an experiment for you—strip off all your clothes in that form, and we can discover whether what’s underneath matches that which you’ve taken from my imagination, or whether you’ll alter it to convince me otherwise.”

Sauron looks away, but not before Maedhros catches the glint of embarrassment in Not-Fingon’s eyes. “Is that a blush I see creeping into your cheeks, Gorathaur?” Maedhros cries, struggling with the mad laughter that twists and yanks inside of him. “Well, that is something I never thought I’d see, even in an illusion. But your portrayal of Fingon is a farce. I refuse to believe you’ve taken it from my mind—he would never shy away from me.”

Sauron whirls on him, the light in his eyes furious. “I am Fingon!” he snarls. For a delightful moment Maedhros thinks that Sauron is going to strike him. But then he seems to crumble, his face shutting down into a blank mask as he turns and leaves the room. Maedhros hears the locks in the door turn afterwards, just as they always do. Another reminder that even in this fantasy, he is still a prisoner.

He settles back down into the bed, a grim smile on his face. Something in Sauron has changed since Maedhros saw him last—he can see the cracks creeping over his visage. Perhaps his war goes poorly. Perhaps Maedhros is to be rescued from Angaband after all.

The thought makes him smile, and then chuckle, and then laugh for so long that he hears footsteps hurrying to stop outside his door, then hesitate, then leave. He frightens them. Good. They may not be real, but there’s some satisfaction in chasing shadows.

If something has caused Sauron to begin to break, Maedhros resolves to see it through to the end.

 

 

“They say you’re mad.” Sauron’s hands are clenched on his knees, Celegorm’s familiar open expression shuttered like a window in a storm. Of all his brothers, such a blunt sentiment did seem most likely coming from Tyelkormo’s lips. A wise choice.

“Mad,” Maedhros repeats. “I didn’t think such a thing could happen to our kind.”

“As ever, it seems you’re determined to be the first.”

Maedhros chuckles. “All dreams are madness,” he replies. “I’m merely reacting appropriately.”

 

As his strength grows, Maedhros takes his first steps out of the bed. A ‘nurse’ tries to help him—he shoves them away with all the strength he has left, and makes his slow, unsteady way around the room with his good shoulder leaning on the wall for support. As the days go on, his legs stop shaking so badly. He begins to do the exercises he used to do in his cell, because there is no reason he can’t make this strange place feel like home after all.

His new cell contains the bed, a chair, a dresser (which itself contains fresh clothes, bandages and ointments, but nothing with sharp edges), a small side-room as a water closet, and a window. Maedhros stands before it and stares out onto trees. At first, the sight of so much green writhing and hissing in the wind makes him feel ill. The color hurts his eyes. He yanks the gossamer curtains across and tries to ignore it, but something keeps bringing him back. He knows it’s an illusion. He tells himself such again and again, even as he stares out for hours.

“Would you like to go out?” Sauron is his uncle now, sitting in the chair as Maedhros continues pacing. He’d seen how Maedhros looked out the window.

Maedhros does not meet Sauron’s gaze. “Confident that your illusion will hold up?” he says conversationally. “Perhaps we ought to test it, then. You were always insistent that we explore all possible outcomes in your experiments.”

Out of the corner of his eyes, Maedhros sees the sad smile spread over Sauron’s face. “And what sorts of experiments were those?”

Maedhros snorts. “Are you asking me to describe them to you? I didn’t take you as the sort to try and relive fond memories. Perhaps you should keep a journal.”

Sauron is quiet for a long time. When Maedhros glances at him, he sees the expression of benevolent sadness still written on Fingolfin’s face. That one, Sauron could imitate very well indeed. “I am sorry that this has happened to you,” Sauron says, rising to his feet. “The nurses tell me you grow stronger every day. Know that you may take as much time as you need to heal, both mind and body.”

“Little point,” Maedhros says harshly. “When I wake up on the wall, all of this will be for nothing.”

“Do you truly believe that?”

Maedhros rounds on him, the familiar anger born from years of pain and fear arising. It was the anger that made even the orcs grow frightened of him. “Tell me this, Sauron,” he snarls. “If this is no deception, then why do my visitors come only one at a time?”

Sauron stares at him blankly. “The healers suggested that any more might be overtaxing.”

Maedhros laughs like a hot ember spat from his lips. “Overtaxing to your powers of illusion, perhaps.”

“I can request that all your brothers be granted a visit.”

“Enough!” Maedhros’s remaining hand clenches into a fist. He can see all the ways he might tear apart the body in front of him, even knowing it isn’t real. It would give him pleasure. But it would give Sauron more. “I’ve no interest in being dazzled by your skill at dream-weaving. Keep your puppets away from me.”

Sauron says nothing as he leaves. Maedhros continues walking, his arm cradled to his chest—and was that detail really so necessary to include? If this was a fantasy meant to ensnare him, why couldn’t he be whole?—and does not look out the window again.

 

 

For a long time, there are no visitors. The medics do not speak to him. When he moves, they flinch away. Soon he moves quickly to startle them intentionally, laughing when they jump back. He tells himself it doesn’t matter, that these people are not real. Soon he hardly sees anyone at all, but for the silent specters that leave a tray of food on his dresser three times a day. They’re feeding him too much. He doesn’t eat half of it. His body fills out again anyways, growing like a spring lamb for the slaughter.

He paces more and more every day. Sometimes he practices lunging across the small space of his cell as quickly as he can, imagining shoving past a guard and making a break for it. If he escapes this room, this compound, this city, will the illusion dissolve around him like mist? Or has Sauron built an entire world in his head for him to scurry in until the end of time? But of course, Maedhros won’t let it go on that long. His source of escape is in this very room. He would dig his fingers into the cracks of Sauron’s facade and pull it apart, piece by piece. He had already identified the first fractures.

It’s Fingon’s shape that comes to him at last, expression carefully schooled into blankness. Maedhros watches him from his place on the bed, his hand folded over his forearm in his lap. He watches Sauron linger near the door, even as it shuts behind him without the tell-tale click of a lock. Maedhros might be able to dart past him. But the key to his freedom is a face, not a door.

“You can come closer, Gorathaur,” Maedhros says amicably. “I haven’t bitten yet.”

Sauron remains where he is, arms crossed tersely over his chest. His dedication to the act is beginning to grate on Maedhros’s nerves.

“I underst—” Sauron cuts himself off as soon as he begins, shakes his head and tries again. “No. I cannot understand what you went through. But I can imagine, roughly, what must have happened in order to make you see me this way. You cannot believe that you have been rescued. And you’re right. You haven’t.”

Maedhros feels his breath catch in his throat, a sudden spasm of terror and triumph clenching over his windpipe. At last. He had known, he had _known_ , and he had been right—

Fingon shakes his head, the words sticking in his throat like barbs. “As long as you persist in this delusion, Maitimo, I can’t say I’ve saved you at all. Your body is here, but your mind is back in Angband.”

Maedhros is on his feet in an instant, anger and frustration and sick, reeling amusement setting him to pacing again. The irony is almost too rich. His mind is here, but his body is on the wall. They both know this.

“Can’t we end this?” Maedhros snaps. “What do you want from me? I’m tired of the game. If I give you what you want, will you let me wake up?”

“I _want_ you to wake up,” Sauron says. “Wake up here, with me, where you can finally start to heal—”

“Stop.” Maedhros’s voice is like the crack of a falling rock shattering on the valley floor far below. He pauses across from Sauron, just out of arm’s reach. In this moment, Fingon’s face looks close enough to the real thing. The same handsome brow, dark, liquid eyes. Maedhros admires them now the way he never would have allowed himself before. Even etched with a careful reproduction of grief, Fingon’s face is lovely even when it is not truly his own.

Sauron meets Maedhros’s scrutiny without flinching. “Why won’t you let me help you?” he says.

Maedhros smiles a thin smile. “You truly wish to help me?”

Sauron nods. “More than anything.”

Maedhros moves, the lunge long-practiced shoving into Sauron and slamming him into the wall behind, his right forearm pinned over Sauron’s chest. Fingon’s borrowed face registers a brief moment of shock and pain as his head hits the wall. He opens his mouth, some false notes of distress already forming—Maedhros can imagine them already. He wants to bite them off Sauron’s false tongue. He kisses them off instead.

The moment he presses his lips to those in front of him, he feels Sauron go slack beneath him. He pushes forward all the same, shoving so hard against Sauron’s body that the sharp bones of his still-emaciated body must jab into him like knives. Maedhros doesn’t care, not even as the body pinned by his tries to batter him away. After all, this isn’t Fingon. Why should he deny himself?

A moment later Sauron wrenches his head away, breaking the kiss but unable to shoulder past Maedhros’s embrace. But of course, he could if he wanted to. Maedhros has felt that awful strength firsthand.

“Isn’t this what you want of me?” Maedhros whispers against Sauron’s neck. His hands rise to Sauron’s tunic and begin to unclasp it with his single remaining hand.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Sauron says, even now reaching up to still Maedhros’s hand. Maedhros twists it away.

“You never had any reservations before,” he growls, tearing the buttons on the tunic in his one-handed clumsiness and haste. Smooth skin and muscle spills out beneath it, so unlike Maedhros’s scars. “Why so coy, Sauron? Do you really think that Fingon would reject my advances?”

“Maitimo,” Fingon gasps, his hands batting Maedhros away. “I won’t do this, not like this, please just _stop_ —”

“Come now,” Maedhros snarls, pinning Sauron’s hand to the wall under his own. He can only hold down the one, now. His right forearm is still pressed against Sauron’s chest, holding him still. “This ruse of yours grows more embarrassing by the second.” He leans in to plant a bruising kiss on the side of Sauron’s neck. “Would you have me pretend for you?” He brushes their lips together between every word, and Fingon’s eyes squeeze shut as if Maedhros’s touch is something cold and dead against him. Maedhros tilts his head to the side, takes Fingon’s ear between his teeth. “Oh, Fingon…” he moans, letting their bodies push together again. He can feel Fingon’s hardness, even as the jaw beneath his lips tightens. He smiles against Fingon’s skin. “How was that?” he murmurs. “Do I have you convinced?”

The shove sends Maedhros stumbling backwards, the backs of his legs hitting the bed and nearly knocking him over. Sauron stays with his back to the wall, breathing hard—are those tears in his eyes? Maedhros nearly laughs. “You’re sick,” he spits. This is the first time that Sauron has reprimanded him in Fingon’s form. It raises uncomfortable memories. They make Maedhros angry.

“Sick?” he repeats. Maedhros’s cell is small, and the space between them is scant—he clears the distance in a couple of strides, but this time he does not push. He wraps his right arm around Sauron’s waist, a light touch easily broken—his hand slides over Fingon’s cheek. _Sauron’s_ cheek, he reminds himself. And yet he cannot help but admire how skillfully the illusion is wrong, how familiar the face before him looks even in its anger. “Am I sick for desiring him?” Maedhros murmurs. “He never seemed to think so in the past, for all the looks broken at just the right time, the hidden smiles, the tug of something never acted upon.” Maedhros’s thumb strokes over Sauron’s cheek. “Is that the fresh torment you wish me to feel?” he asks. “The pain of Findekáno pushing me away?”

Sauron stares at him, every ounce of longing Maedhros had ever thought he’ glimpsed written plainly on his face. So tempting even for the rot beneath. “I never want to push you away,” he whispers. “You know I’ve wanted—if things were different—Eru, I had hoped that now perhaps they could be, but this…” He swallowed. “You aren’t yourself.”

“But I am,” Maedhros whispers. “I’m what you made me into, Sauron. You can’t reject me now.” Maedhros lets his forehead press again Sauron’s, and closes his eyes. He breathes in Fingon’s familiar scent, even though it burns in his chest like acrid fumes. That pain is his own. Sauron cannot replicate that which he cannot understand. More than anything, Maedhros wants to let himself believe this illusion. But to do so would be death of a different kind.

A touch on Maedhros’s neck opens his eyes once more. Sauron blinks at him, confusion and hurt and determination warring on his face. It’s the determination that Maedhros finds most comforting. It’s familiar. “Is this what you need?” he whispers. “If so, I can give that much to you.”

Maedhros inspects the face in front of him, searching for the flicker of amusement that might suggest the direction of Sauron’s plan. There is nothing—only Fingon, just as Maedhros remembers him, so real and solid it skewers him through the heart. Perhaps, Maedhros can let himself pretend. But only in his mind. He will deny Sauron at least that satisfaction.

And so pulls Fingon backwards with him towards the bed with a grip in his opened tunic, forcing a smile. “It’s kind of you to convince me that Fingon has always wanted me, Gorthaur. I expect I should savor what kindness I can get from you.”

Fingon lets himself be drawn on like a fish on hook, the pain in his eyes evident even as he lets Maedhros kiss him over and over. “I have always wanted you, Maitimo,” Fingon whispers. “I want you to believe that.”

“And ever have I given you what you want.” When Maedhros feels the bed hit the back of his legs he falls down onto it, leaving Fingon standing over him. Without hesitation Maedhros sets to undoing the laces of his pants with a smirk on his lips, his right forearm hooked around the back of Fingon’s thighs. At once Fingon’s hand comes down to still his own. “Did you do this with Sauron often?” he says quietly. His voice is colorless, missing some essential ingredient.

Maedhros hisses out a breath in irritation at being stopped. “Can we skip this portion of the performance?” he says. “Spare me from your feigned disgust. Or is that false jealousy I see written on your face?” He bats Fingon’s hand away, continues unlacing his breeches. “Finno wouldn’t be disgusted,” he says, mostly to himself. “He would understand that I did what had to be done. He always did.”

Maedhros looks up into Sauron’s face and is surprised to see the tears glimmering in his eyes. “I do understand,” he whispers. After a moment, Maedhros has to look away. It’s too close to reality for him to face.

He finishes his clumsy opening of Fingon’s breeches, pulls him free. Fingon lets out a sharp breath at the touch, a sound as if he has been doused in cold water. There is no use in hesitating, in drawing this out. Maedhros leans forward to take Fingon into his mouth in one smooth stroke, feeling the weight and pressure and heat pressing on the back of his throat and yet not stopping. Fingon groans, the sound as broken as a sob, and Maedhros glances up to see his head tilted back, his eyes squeezed shut and his teeth digging into his lower lip. Maedhros has scarcely dared allow himself to think of a moment like this before, and yet it seems that something is wrong—this isn’t what he wanted, what either of them wanted. But it’s too late for him to stop now. There is only forward, only driving them both towards something dark and terrible that cannot be returned from.

Before long Fingon’s hands are buried in Maedhros’s hair, not urging him faster or slowing him down, simply resting there gently as Maedhros moves himself. It isn’t long before he cries out a warning, a strangled “ _Maitimo_ ” as he tries to pull away—Maedhros’s grip on his hips is iron, and he feels Fingon’s shuddering release on the back of his tongue before he lets Fingon pull away.

Fingon’s shaking hands slip free from Maedhros’s hair to lace up his breeches once more. The silence in the room is deafening. Maedhros wipes his mouth and looks up into Fingon’s face, but Fingon doesn’t meet his eyes. For the first time, Maedhros has to seriously convince himself—this is Sauron standing before him, the pain in his eyes a reproduction of that he’d seen glinting in other’s eyes. _It’s not him_. _It can’t be._

“I hadn’t wanted it to be this way,” Fingon whispers. “But, I suppose, now, after everything… this is all that’s left to us.”

The words of quiet mockery die on Maedhros’s tongue as Fingon turns for the door without another word. Something terrible happens inside him for the first time since he felt the iron teeth of the shackle closing over his hand. For one brilliant, agonizing moment, he experiences doubt.

 _Finno_ , he almost says as the hunched figure slips past the door and pulls it closed behind him. He’s not Sauron. He’s not Fingon. He’s a clotted mass of shadows that wavers and collapses in on itself.

The door closes. That couldn’t have been Fingon. Maedhros would have never—he wouldn’t have gone about it this way, not if it were real. Fingon was the only person left in the world Maedhros could imagine kindness towards, and if Fingon ever stood before him in truth he would teach himself to be tender once more. He would not be broken. He would not be cruel. And therefore, by pure logic, this cannot be real at all. It’s all still a trick. All a game. And in the end, Sauron has already won.

Maedhros lies back down on the bed, stretching out so that the balls of his feet touch the footboard. His good arm he lets fall by his side. The stump he raises over his head, in the position that still causes a tearing of pain in his shoulder and chest from where he had held it so long. He closes his eyes. He can imagine the shackle, the wind, the rock digging into his back. He’s there now. He can feel it.

He’s there.

He’s there. He’s—

The first and only sob breaks in his chest. It’s as dry and mal-formed as he is, now.

Within a week, he calls for Fingolfin, and asks to be let outside. When the sunlight touches his skin it burns him, outside and in, until he is nothing.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

There’s not many of them left, now.

The blood of the field had sloshed up under his boots as he stumbled onward, stumbled through a storm. Around him, the remains of their defeated army collapses into the mud, exhaustion and grief pinning them down for the moment. Soon, they will have to move again. But not yet.

Maedhros sits on a fallen log, a dark figure against the mist of rain. His left hand still grips the hilt of his sword, a sight which keeps his fellow troops at bay. His right stump hangs uselessly at his side, the prosthetic in his lap. It had taken a lot of convincing, but Curvo eventually won him over to it. Maglor had been the one to propose it, in the beginning. He wonders, now, if the metal band that circles around his flesh reminds his brother of a shackle.

Maglor approaches him, and stops a short distance away. He knows better than to reach out and touch. Maedhros stares into nothing, but his eyes are as sharp and full of fire as ever. Sometimes, when Maglor looks at him closely, he thinks he can see the glint of Angband’s forges burning deep within them. Such a thing is mere speculation—Maedhros spoke nothing of his time imprisoned there, and Maglor does not meet his eyes very often.

He calls his brother’s name many times before Maedhros comes back to him. Once Maglor might have clasped his shoulder, pulled him into an embrace—now the two of them only regard each other, wary, two strangers meeting on a dark road and walking in the same direction. Where this all will lead to, Maglor cannot say.

“Are you with me?” he asks.

Maedhros’s expression remains empty. Maglor was never sure how he managed it, that utter void behind his features. Perhaps it isn’t a conscious thing. Perhaps there is really nothing behind. At long last, his brother nods. It’s a paltry gesture, but proof enough that Maedhros hears him. What he thinks—what he feels—remain far beyond Maglor’s reach.

“Where else would I be?” Maedhros asks, and the ghost of an ironic smile touches his scarred lips. Maglor does not respond. They both know the answer. Of all their brothers, Maglor was the only one who never truly believed Maedhros so long ago, when he had looked into all their eyes and called them by their true names once more. _I was confused_ , he had said. _But I know you now, brothers. I know I am home._ They had embraced him, and pretended not to notice the stiffness in their brother’s spine the simple contact. Mere weeks ago he had accused them all of being Sauron’s puppets. Yet now it was Maedhros who had cast the illusion over himself, the false image that he was whole.

When he looks up, he finds Maedhros watching him now. He reads Maglor’s face as easily as he ever had, but with less compassion. He knows why Maglor has sought him out.

“Where is Findekáno?” he asks abruptly.

Maglor says nothing. In the long moment before he speaks, he knows his brother has guessed the truth. Perhaps he has always known it. “Finno is dead.”

Maedhros stares at him. Maglor can guess what he sees—the glint of yellow Maedhros used to search for in his eyes, the ripple of amusement unable to be contained. In his brother’s eyes, he is no brother at all. A figment. A mask. And behind it, Sauron’s face.

He saw that in Finno, too. Maglor had never asked what happened between them. The years had been long since they had spoken last. Maglor suspected that out of all of them, Fingon was the one person Maedhros had never bothered pretending for. He would have given Fingon nothing but the truth, the belief that none of this was real. It would have been kinder to lie. Seeing Maedhros so utterly broken had turned their cousin as hard as iron, knowing he had failed.

“I know where I am,” Maedhros says, firmly, as if reminding himself of that fact. Maglor understands immediately—there is nothing else he could have meant.

“Of course, Maitmo,” Maglor says, exhaustion turning his features to stone. “You’re on the wall. And one day, you’re going to wake up.”

The words are familiar on Maglor’s tongue—he heard Maedhros say them so many times, and he could scarcely ever forget them. Maedhros is silent for a long while. They have never spoken of it. Maglor knows they will never speak of it again. For Maedhros, the world is something far beyond his reach. For Maglor, his brother is just as far. It must be tiring, to be the only person left in the world.

“I hope it will not be too much longer,” Maedhros says, his voice scarcely a hoarse whisper over the hiss of the rain.

Maglor stares at the troops around them, the violent red of their blood turned grey and brown by the rain and mud. So many dead. And those that did not die walk as ghosts among them. “I don’t think it will be, brother,” Maglor says quietly.

Maedhros raises his eyes to inspect storm clouds thickening over them, the faint touch of rain settling on his eyelashes like tears. There was no hope that he could see in that iron-grey sky, or beyond it. Beyond lay only darkness, and the ever-present call of the oath.

And for Maedhros, perhaps, the wall.


End file.
